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You can use this link: ASTROLOGY BITES

Goodbye Buckwheat. Rest in Peace

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Buckwheat

May 6, 2008 - February 9, 2009

Hold me, squeeze me, hug me, kiss me, love me, pet me, tickle me; do it all again.
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If I Could Get You To Smile Before I Leave

Jackson Browne is a better poet than Jim Morrison ever thought of being. This is one of my all-time favorite songs, and expresses perfectly what I need to say.



I appreciate all the support and friendship you've offered me the past couple years. I wish I could give each of you a hug. You're the best. I'll be around to visit you as time allows, and you know my e-mail address if you need to get in touch with me. I'm turning the comments off now.

Miss Snark Hangs Up Her Stilettos

Thinking Blogger Award

I've been nominated (again, but the first time, I was too everything to do it) by Ebony Enchantress for the Thinking Blogger Award. Thank you, EE.

Now I'm supposed to choose five other people on which to bestow this honor. This is a tough choice. I'm sure it's supposed to be based on the blogs that make me think, but you all do. I'm going to give my own reasons.

The first one is a no brainer. Moristotle, you make me think too much. It taxes my intellect, and subtracts points from my IQ. I'd just as soon read your opinions on things than have to sort out my own, after you raise so many new ideas. If there's anyone who really makes me think hard, it's you. (Moristotle has an awesome post today, y'all. Go check it out!)

Steve expects a lot less from me, and after Morris, I need that break. Plus, Steve is the hardest working man in blogging. Back when I was able to visit y'all every day, no matter where I went, Steve had already been there. He must visit a hundred blogs a day.

I love Corn Dog because I can always count on her to make me laugh. No matter how tough her day is, she always faces it with humor and acerbic wit. I can't count the number of times she's kept me from going off the deep end. Plus, she sent me some really cool stuff in the mail a few days ago, and Sneezy threatened to whip my ass if I didn't nominate her.

Scary Monster is hip and cool, and I love the soulful things he writes. He reminds me of who I want to be, and wish I was.

Romulus Crowe. Does anyone have a real name better than that? It just sounds spooky. I'm nominating Rom because I know he'll hate it, and it will be a virtual guarantee of being haunted if he kicks off before I do. I'll have the camera and video recorder ready, Rom. Not that I'm rushing you off, or anything. Take your time.

I guess you get to display the award on your blog if you want. If anyone doesn't know how, copy by right clicking on it.

You're supposed to leave a link back here, too, so everyone can read what I said about you, but whether you do any of it is up to you. I know some of you have already been nominated by other people, and my feelings won't be hurt, because I already know you worship and adore me.

Thanks again, Ebony Enchantress, for the honor (and something to blog about today).

The Things People Google to Land Here

I don’t know what other stat counters do, but mine tells me what someone Googled that landed them here. I’ve often wished I could e-mail the person with the answer, but unfortunately, it’s a one-way street. Today, I thought it would be fun give them some answers.



How do you pronounce Lesia?

I think it depends on which part of the world you live in. Mine is pronounced as plain old “Lisa.” (Lee suh) My mother wasn’t very good at spelling. Everyone in my family spelled it as Lisa until I was twelve or thirteen, and I found my birth certificate. I used to see my bio father about once every twelve years, and when I was in my thirties, he asked me why the hell I spell it as I do. I had to whip out the birth certificate to prove to him that they had done this to me.

In Russia, I believe it is pronounced as Lasha. (Lash uh) In other parts of the U.S., I’ve asked people who say they pronounce it as Les ee uh, and Lee see uh (like Alicia, without the A).


What’s another Southern word for tub?

I dunno. Bathtub? Frankly, I didn’t know we had another word for it. That’s news to me. We just think we’re lucky we finally got ‘em.


Grown daughter spanked

Sorry, this isn’t that kind of blog.



Her breasts

Whose breasts? Mine? Good luck, buddy. Better men than you have tried to see them.


I’m a joker, I’m a toker, I’m a midnight smoker.

That was originally the Steve Miller Band singing The Joker, circa 1972, I think. Someone else has recently butchered it. I don’t know who, and don’t care to know. I’m surprised how often this one gets Googled.


What is a Southern?


A Southerner (not Southern) is a person who was raised up south of the Mason-Dixon line in a part of the U.S. known as “Dixie.” It separated the Yankees from the civilized folks who talk normal. The part of the South considered Dixie consists of the states of Virginia, West Virginia, South Carolina (North Carolina, too, but we still haven’t forgiven them for calling themselves North Carolinians), Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, Louisiana, Georgia, and Alabama. Texas and Florida are not part of Dixie. Neither are Missouri or Arkansas.


Chronic renal failure cat makes clicking ticking sound

This is an indication that your cat’s batteries need to be replaced immediately.



St. Augustine quotes ear sound


Here it is: “Trying to understand the mysteries of the Universe is like trying to hear with no ears.”



Is it illegal to pull Spanish moss off a Live Oak tree in Louisiana?


Yes. The tree must be dead first. However, it’s perfectly okay to pull it off Cypress trees if they’re standing in ten feet of swamp water.


Who is Miss Snark?

I wondered this myself, and did a bit of sleuthing. The truth is that Miss Snark is a dragoon of cigar-chomping old guys sitting around in their skivvies in a windowless room. That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.

Dance Wars

SJ posted a salsa dance video (La Vida Loca) on her blog. Here's Chelo Cha Cha.

Be Careful What You Wish For

… for you will surely get it – in spades.

I wanted a kitty to keep Sneezy company. Remember the cats from the house behind mine that I told you disappeared after a thunderstorm, and finally showed up again a few days later? One was pregnant. Then she wasn’t. She was spending all her time at my house, and didn’t seem to want to go home any more, so I put food out for her. Today, four little wild cats showed up in my back yard, and they look just like her.

I named one Ghost. She is the meanest little thing, white as a snowflake, except for a patch of gray on her butt, and her tail. She hisses and growls, and spits and scratches, and bites and carries on like a poltergeist (05/28/07 - Ghost finally got over it. She's very sweet and loveable now).

Another one has been named Shy. She’s white with gray patches all over. She's the runt, and the other kitties don't play with her (05/28/07 She wasn't getting enough to eat, so I had to bottle feed her. The poor thing was starving, and chewed the nipple right off the bottle in about two minutes. She's doing much better now).

One is an explorer. I’m thinking of calling it Columbus, but that may change when I discover its gender. He's roly poly chubby, and the fuzziest of the four.

The fourth one looks just like Shy, except she has a white tip on her tail. Her name is Champ, for the sister of one of my husband's friends, a little girl who wears a baseball cap backwards, and loves sports.

I put down a glass quiche dish with a fish dinner in it for them, big enough that they can all eat simultaneously. Mama Cat ate every bite, so I gave them more. A few minutes later, I looked in on them, and all four were up in the dish, chowing down, with Mama Cat supervising. They are in my house, protected from Old Yeller – the yellow feral cat that hangs around sometimes, all the neighbor’s dogs, the weather, and anything else that gets kitties (05/28/07 - The last time I saw Old Yeller, he had a huge patch of skin hanging off his neck. That's been quite a while ago, and I think he went off somewhere and died).

I went to the neighbor’s house to let them know the situation, and they said it isn’t their cat (a likely story). I cannot keep all these kitties, and I will not take them to the shelter. In addition, I have a black kitten on hold for me as soon as it’s weaned. And another neighbor is trying to get me to take a yellow and white kitty they adopted, and decided they don’t want. I can't take it! To top it all off, Sneezy doesn’t like any of them.

Now I'm off to wish to win the lottery.

Calling All Virgos - Codex Alimentarius

You don’t have to be a Virgo to care about this issue, of course, but Virgos, and other people with a lot of Virgo influence in their charts, tend to be health conscious kind of people. If any of you are proponents of organic foods, herb supplements, live with life threatening disease, fear the pesticides we ingest everyday, don’t trust the big drug companies that have our politicians in their back pockets, or the wisdom of our government, this is for you.

Misty brought this to my attention. It’s important to her, so I took the time to listen. In light of the food poisoning that recently killed many of our pets, I think we should pay attention here if we don’t want the same thing happening to us, to our children, or our grandchildren.

This is a video of a speech given by Dr. Rima Laibow on the subject of Codex Alimentarius. It does take 40 uninterrupted minutes of your time, and I know that’s a lot to some of you. It’s your choice to be informed, or not to be. I’m not asking you to follow along blindly – I’m asking you NOT TO. Ask questions, dig deeper, check it out for yourself. Vote your conscious, as they say.

I know. This is not a fun post. It won't make you laugh. It's not what you came looking for. But it is important to your future.

Should you decide to invest your time, click HERE. If for some reason the link becomes broken, here’s the URL: http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/index.php

Another Wakeup Call

I happened to run across this today.

The comments are as interesting as the post itself.

Waking Up When the Dream is Over

Why is it that only good things must come to an end, but bad things reach infinity, tie a knot around it, and hang on for dear life?

This is an excerpt from The Last Girls by Southern writer, Lee Smith, a story about four young women who raft down the Mississippi together in the ‘60’s:

They sang in spite of all their mishaps and travails: the tail of the hurricane that hit them before they even got to Cairo, a diet consisting mostly of tuna and doughnuts, mosquito bites beyond belief, and rainstorms that soaked everything they owned. If anything really bad happened to them, they knew they could call up somebody’s parents collect, and the parents would come and fix things. They expected to be taken care of. Nobody had yet suggested to them that they might ever have to make a living or that somebody wouldn’t marry them and look after them for the rest of their lives. They all smoked cigarettes. They were all cute. They headed down the river with absolute confidence that they would get where they were going.

How ignorant they were! But it was just as well, really, wasn’t it? Because everything is going to happen to you sooner or later anyway, whether you know it or not.

I was that way once: young, cute, brave, foolish. It would never have been my parents who were called, or mine who would rescue us, but someone would. Yvonne’s mom, or Darlene’s cool young aunt, or maybe one of our beaus. Someone would come. My life stretched out before me like a road trip to New Orleans. Although I began working at fifteen, it certainly didn’t occur to me that I would have to make a living someday. Work back then was just an opportunity to spend more time with friends, although I was neither irresponsible – I gave my parents money, and lots of it – nor selfish. I made sure my little sisters had many things our parents couldn’t, or wouldn’t, provide; things I had certainly never been given. I suppose I knew I would marry someday, but a fancy wedding like the one I bought for my older sister, The Bitch, would never be something I would experience. I doubt very much I expected my future husband to take care of me the rest of my days – I always worked, and suffering from the myopia that young people often have, I don’t think I ever looked that far ahead.

At some point I crossed a bridge. I guess I decided that I had paid my damn dues, and if I was ever going to be what I wanted to be, instead of what was expected of me, it was now or never. I wasn’t getting any younger. I’d spent the better part of fifteen years studying astrology and decided I could do something with it, so I did. Fifteen years. I could have been a doctor twice if they gave degrees in astrology back then (they do, now). I made $60 an hour, and I was cheap. Most professionals charge $100 an hour. I wrote a daily newspaper column on the subject, to boot. Daily. Every day. Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s, Easter, Fourth of July, Labor Day, Memorial Day, every freaking weekend. While everyone else was out partying, I was casting charts and writing. And yet, all I ever heard was, “When are you going to get a job?” often followed by, “And will you look at my chart for me?”

I knew when I returned to the Bible Belt, an area so poor they sell dirt, that I would not be making my living with astrology. I got a job. After three months, my department was eliminated. I got another job. After three months, my department was moved to another city. I got a temp job. After three months, I finished the assignment. I was offered a job with that company, but I detest accounting. I didn’t accept. I was burned out and frustrated. I sometimes worked in other jobs you don’t want to know about, and I don’t want to tell you. But something wonderful happened. I was compelled to write down a great story I knew. I couldn’t refuse. It was like being pregnant; it had to come out of me, or it would kill me trying. Sometimes I wrote and sold a few articles, and I edited a few books. The money wasn’t great, but I was working toward a goal, a dream that was important to me. All I heard was, “When are you going to get a job?” So I finally got a fucking job. And things went from bad to worse. Menu Foods. Vet bills. A chain reaction of things that didn’t get paid because I have to pay the vet (a fact that’s driving my husband to delirium). Everything that could go wrong, has, and then some. I have no time to write. I am to the point where I am beginning to wonder if I should delete the post on Voodoo Village. Maybe old Wash Harris put a curse on me. I no longer have any confidence that I will get where I was going. There is no one to call collect. No one is coming to rescue me. I’ve simply graduated from, “When are you going to get a job?” to “Well, if you’d had a job all this time, you wouldn’t be in this mess; oh, and would you write something for me?”

A little sympathy was too much to ask. A kind word. Some understanding. Instead, I got the truth. I have no one to blame but myself. I should have had a job all this time. The dream is over. Time to wake up. Life can turn on a dime, good people. Things can change in an instant. No one is immune, not even those to whom everything is going to happen, sooner or later anyway, whether they know it or not.

Great Reads, Great Authors

According to Publisher’s Lunch yesterday, a new Pat Conroy novel is on the way:

Pat Conroy's new novel, set in Charleston and nearly 700 pages, is close to completion. He tells the AP, "It drives me nuts. But long-windedness ... there's nothing you can do about it. I wanted to write a 250-page novel, but I realize I can't even write a prologue that's 250 pages." The wire says the new book will be "a return to the same dysfunctional characters he's known for." It will be his first novel in over a decade.

A Southerner, Conroy is a man after my own heart. I don’t care if a book is seven thousand pages. Tell me the story, tell it well, and move me in the process. I like a lot of metaphor, a lot of description, character growth, and especially a lot of emotion. Conroy says he was raised by Scarlett O'Hara. You know he's someone you have to read!

Did you know he’s married to Cassandra King, author of The Sunday Wife? Misty recommended that book to me, and I liked it a lot. I read it quite a long time ago and still remember what it’s about, whereas, I can’t even recall the titles of many books I read around the same time. Some of you might like to read it if you plan to keep up with the trial of Mary Winkler, the Selmer, Tennessee preacher’s wife who shot her husband in the back.

I finally read David Long’s The Inhabited World.

Some of you might remember it as one of the books I bought with the Amazon gift card I won from Todd Wheeler. It took me quite a while to finish it because my time is so short these days that I often only got to read a page or two here and there. It’s about a man, Evan Molloy, who committed suicide, and his spirit is now stuck in the house where he died (Some people just know how to get my attention). Several residents have moved in and out, but now there’s Maureen Keniston, who is trying to break off a long affair with a married doctor. The story moves back and forth between Evan’s past problems and Maureen’s present ones. As she learns to solve her issues, it helps Evan to solve his.

This book contains one of the most astute and amazing metaphors I have ever read. It’s not flowery or fancy, just brilliant. I don’t write spoilers; you’ll have to read it yourself, but you’ll know it when you see it. It’s one of those things that make you say to yourself, “Why didn’t I think of that? Yes, it must be exactly that way!” I highly recommend it.

Read a sample here.

Classifieds - "Kittens, Free to a Good Home" Needed

I need a new kitty. Sneezy misses Catfish, and she’s lonely.

There were some other cats, four, I think, that must live in the house behind mine, who were here constantly up until we had the thunderstorm last week, but now they seem to have disappeared. I shudder to think what may have become of them. I cannot go to the shelter and look for them, because if I found them, I would have to adopt them. I could never take one or two, and leave the others behind. I simply couldn’t. Nor can I afford to adopt them all, much less feed them, and pay for their vet bills. The good news is that the shelter in my town is a no-kill shelter. People who discard their pets like yesterday’s newspaper irk the shit out of me. When I adopt a pet, it’s for life, come hell or high water.

I’d like to get a solid black male, like Catfish. Someone told me the other day that Sneezy will know the difference. Ya think? I didn’t know whether to laugh or be annoyed. I’m pretty sure when the term “dumb animal” was coined, it’s because they can’t speak, not because they aren’t smart. In many ways, I think they’re smarter than we are. I’m certain none of them ever voted for Dubya Bush.


I checked bulletin boards and the paper today for “kitties, free to a good home,” but there were none. I couldn’t believe people want from $20 to $$$ (hundreds) of dollars for a cat, when normally, you can’t give them away. It’s why I had Sneezy spayed before she ever had a litter. God bless the animal shelters, but I can’t go there. It reduces me to tears. When I fantasize about winning the Powerball, the first item on my list of things to get are all the animals at the shelter, and round-the-clock employees to help care for them. Of course, I’ll need a big ol’ plantation to house them all.

So anyway, if any of you in the Memphis area have friends who are trying to give away kittens, and they have a solid black male, would you please let me know? Sneezy will love it to pieces.

P.S. There's an update about low phospherous diets and binders in the comments here. Hopefully, there will be an update about Azodyl next week.

low phospherous binders Azodyl low phospherous binders Azodyl low phospherous binders Azodyl low phospherous binders Azodyl low phospherous binders Azodyl
UPDATE May 7, 2007: I ran into Matt this weekend. He's the vet tech who's sharp as a tack and truly cares, and he looked into Azodyl for me. He said it works well for animals with chronic renal failure as opposed to acute renal failure. So while it would not have helped Sneezy at the time she ate the tainted pet food, it will help her now. This is worth asking your vet about.

Someone came here by way of a Google search with the term "chronic renal failure cat makes clicking ticking sound." I know nothing about that, but I'd like to, if anyone can clue me in!

Bush Screws the Country

"Bush is so ignorant. And I don't like idiotic, impulsive people." ~ Kurt Vonnegut


The thumbnail preview didn't work, but you can watch how Bush screws the country right here.

Careful where you open it! It's definitely R, maybe X rated, depending on your sensibilities, and whether or not you're a Bush fan. If you are a Bush fan, what the hell are you doing on my blog? Be gone with you!